This is the transcript for the video Graduate Certificate in Professional Legal Practice
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Okay so let’s get started. Thanks very much
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everyone for coming to join me in this session on the graduate certificate
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in professional legal practice. My name is Bronwyn Olliffe and some of you have
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been in one or other of my ethics law and
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justice classes. i’m an associate professor here in the
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faculty of law at UTS and in fact the reason i came to
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UTS 24 years ago was to help set up the practical legal training course here
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at UTS so i’m very much involved in the program and have been for the past
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24 years. All right so why do you need to do a
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course of practical legal training? surely
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after all of the study that you’ve been doing over the past few years in your
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law degree you’ve worked very hard, why do you need to do anything else? well
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the reason is it’s to comply with the legislation which sets out how
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you become a lawyer. So first of all you have to have
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a law degree in the form of an LLB or a JD and then you need to
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complete practical legal training. And for most
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people that’s going to be via the graduate certificate in
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professional legal training and that’s what we call it at
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UTS. Once you’ve completed your law degree and your practical legal
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training you can apply for admission to the
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supreme court of new south wales. You make that
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application to the new south wales legal profession
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admission board and they determine whether or not they
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will give a compliance certificate to the supreme court. If the supreme
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court agrees you will then be admitted. It’s a wonderful ceremony in
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the Banco Court or at the moment it’s being conducted
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virtually but usually it’s at the supreme court in the
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Banco Court. And then you will be eligible to take
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out a restricted practicing certificate with
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the law society of new south wales.
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after a couple of years you are then eligible to take out
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an unrestricted practicing certificate. If you want to become a barrister there
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are another couple of steps in that most people won’t go directly to the bar
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straight from completing their practical legal training
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most people will undertake a period of practice
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as a solicitor. But some of you might think that
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what you would like to do is go directly to the bar
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and if that’s the case you will need to do the
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exams to qualify to do the bar practice course.
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so a few more steps before you would be eligible
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to go to the bar. All right as i mentioned
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i’ve been here for 24 years at UTS
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when i came to help set up the practical legal training course.
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So it just shows you we have got a great deal of experience
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in delivering a practical legal training course.
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it’s a course which has been accredited by the legal profession
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admission board and we offer the course in many flexible ways: you can
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choose to do a face-to-face course just in the same
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way as you have undertaken most of your subjects here at UTS
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or you can choose to do the whole course online. So if you choose to do the online
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course then you will be required in two of the
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subjects to come in for about two days,
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most of that is in relation to assessment
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but there are a couple of skills workshops
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which are delivered in those on-campus days that you’d be required to attend.
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One of the benefits of doing our course
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is that you are able to accumulate your practical experience. Now that’s
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part of the requirement of doing a practical legal training course
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is that you have to undertake 75 days here at UTS
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or at our UTS course 75 days of practical experience so that’s a work
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placement and i’ll talk about that a little
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later. In our learning here at UTS
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we have always had a focus on experiential learning
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you’re really learning by doing and the sort of things that you are doing in
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each of the subjects are the sort of things that you
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would be expected to be doing in your first position
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as a graduate lawyer. So you don’t have any exams, you’re doing
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the sorts of things that you would be doing when you first
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start in your first job. On this slide you can see there’s a
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reference to the early start rule. It is possible to commence your
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practical legal training subjects if you have completed all your core law
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subjects and have no more than two electives remaining and i’ll talk a
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little bit more about that later on in this presentation.
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So get ready for practice with our
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flexible delivery, so as i mentioned you can
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choose to do the course on a total face-to-face basis or
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you can do the course on a total online basis.
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if you want to you can mix it up you can do
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one subject on a face-to-face basis and the other two subjects
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on an online basis it’s really what works for you.
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so many of our practical legal training students are
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already working in a job so they are trying to balance their studies
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with their job so it’s really up to you to see what is going to work best for
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you. My recommendation is if you are
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working full time please don’t try and do the course full time
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because that just leads to a lot of stress
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a lot of anxiety and you’re not going to be able to perform your best if you
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are working more than 24 hours a day seven days a week.
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We offer the course in every session so we have an autumn a spring
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and a summer intake and it’s up to you whether you do the
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course on a full-time basis or you do it on a part-time basis. If
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you’re doing it on a full-time basis then you would be doing the three
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six-credit point subjects plus practical experience and
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practical experience is a zero credit point subject so
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that means you don’t get charged for it but you must undertake the subject
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practical experience. So what are these subjects that you
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would be doing as part of your graduate certificate in professional legal practice?
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You would be doing legal and professional skills
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transactional practice litigation and estate practice and each of those
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subjects is worth six credit points. What is the workload involved with
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that? well that’s very similar to the six credit point subjects so the electives
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that you’ve been doing in your law degree that’s the sort of
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workload that you need to be thinking of when you’re trying to work out what
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workload will i take on when i’m undertaking my graduate
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certificate in professional legal practice. Now some of you might be
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thinking well when i looked the graduate certificate
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has 24 credit points and Bronwyn’s only talking about 18 credit points worth
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of study for the graduate certificate. All students
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who have an LLB or a JD receive an automatic six credit point
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credit recognition meaning that you only
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pay for 18 credit points within this 24 credit
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point graduate certificate. so if you’re trying to work out what are
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the fees that i will be charged for undertaking this course then
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what you need to do is multiply the credit point
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of 18 credit points times the fee for each credit.
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So practical experience, what is it? well basically
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it is a work placement. You have to do 15 weeks or
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75 days and a maximum of 40 hours per week of practical experience
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with an approved supervisor. So if you have a look
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at the practical experience rules you will be able to find out exactly
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what is required. I suggest that you all type into your
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favorite search engine UTS practical experience rules and that
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is the easiest way to find those rules. One of the benefits of doing our
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course is that you can get credit from any
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previous work experience that meets the criteria
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you can get credit for any work experience up to 60 days
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of those 75 days which you’ve undertaken in the previous two years prior to the
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commencement of the subject. So if you’ve been working
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in a law firm for example as a paralegal
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during the past two years if your supervisor is willing to say that you
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have been doing that and that, in your supervisor’s opinion, it meets
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the practical experience rules then you can have those
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60 days credited towards the 75 days
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that you are required to undertake. When you read the rules you’ll see
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that although you can do your practical experience
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at the same time as undertaking the practical legal training
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subjects you don’t have to start your practical
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experience straight away because you have up to two years
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from the session of enrollment in practical experience
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to complete all 75 days in that approved placement.
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Now there have been occasions where a student has had to
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seek a an exemption from that, perhaps they’ve had some health issues
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or some life event which has made it
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impossible for them to complete practical experience within those two
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years and then extensions are available – you
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have to apply and those circumstances will be
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considered but two years does give you quite a long time to be
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able to complete that work placement and of course the
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work placement must comply with the practical
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experience rules. So how do you find a placement?
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well it’s up to our students to find their
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own placement. Unfortunately it’s not possible
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for UTS to find a placement for everybody.
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we do have a practical experience website
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and on that website we recommend that you contact
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UTS Career Hub, we also have a UTS online PLT forum and there
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is Legal Vitae which is a part of the new south wales law
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society which assists law graduates in finding positions.
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we also have a number of opportunities here at UTS to undertake
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the practical experience. So you may have heard of Anti-slavery
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Australia, they always take on a couple of practical experience
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students. We have the UTS student legal service
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perhaps some of you might have even gone to get some legal advice
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but that service always takes on a couple of
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practical experience students and similarly the actual
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university legal service which is advising the university
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they also take on a couple of practical
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experience students from UTS so although we can’t assist you to find
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that position we do have various avenues that can make
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it a bit easier for you to find those positions.
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Unfortunately most of the practical experience positions
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that are undertaken are done on a voluntary basis so that is
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something that you need to factor in to your plans.
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many students do their practical experience placement
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with a community legal center but other people will do their
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practical experience with a law firm or in some other
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placement. All right now it is possible to start
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your PLT subjects prior to completion of your law degree if you have no more
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than two electives remaining in your degree.
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so you can be doing your remaining electives at the time that you
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commence your practical legal training subjects.
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it’s not something that we can approve, it’s
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not up to UTS to approve it, you have to apply to the new south wales
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legal profession admission board to seek
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approval to undertake early practical legal training study.
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when you do that what you have to do is you have to
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include a letter from the dean of law here at the faculty
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and the dean will say that you only have two
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electives remaining and the LPAB will rely on that. To get
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the dean’s letter what you have to do is you have to wait until
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your results are released so that it will show that you’ve only got two
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electives remaining and the way that you get that letter is
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you email the faculty of law academic programs officer
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to arrange for that dean’s letter to be prepared.
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so do keep that in mind.
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It is possible to commence in the program – and this is particularly
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relevant in the summer session
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and also in the spring session because it’s a very tight turnaround
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between when results are released and the commencing
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of the next session – it is possible to start
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in the course prior to getting the final approval from the admissions
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section of the university. So you can put in your
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application for the graduate certificate in professional
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legal practice and you can do it while you are awaiting
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the approval from the LPAB. What happens is the admissions unit at
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UTS will make a special offer with
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conditions that is pending the LPAB approval
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and that will allow you to accept and enroll in the subjects
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for the graduate certificate. If the LPAB does approve you to commence PLT
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early then you’ll need to provide the UTS submissions with the approval letter
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by the due date listed in your offer letter so your offer letter will set out
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when you have to prove to admissions that you
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are approved to undertake early PLT. If the LPAB refuses your application
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or if you fail a subject you must withdraw from
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the PLT subjects before the census date. so that’s a responsibility on you
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to make sure that you’ve withdrawn before the census.